28 PRESENT SYSTEM. 



an officer he is an inferior ; as an agent he is an equal a rela- 

 tion which is as hard to design graphically as it is difficult to 

 describe. 



The Ordnance Storekeeper appears to be intended as a sort of 

 check on the Commanding Officer, just as in primitive societies 

 two or more officers may hold different keys to the same money 

 chest ; each expenditure requires the united action pf both agents ; 

 fraud is impossible without collusion. 



This does well enough when the agents are of equal powers ; 

 but the precaution is apt to lead to confusion when one of the 

 parties is, so to speak, both a rival and a superior to the other. 



The principle of co-ordinate control may, however, be con- 

 veniently applied when money only is concerned, even under the 

 peculiar relations above stated. Such transactions may be delib- 

 erate, for the certainty of payment is, to the creditor, almost 

 equivalent to the actual transfer of the cash. No harm is done, 

 no clashing of interests follows, say, a day's interval between the 

 approval of a voucher by the Commanding Officer, and its pay- 

 ment by the Ordnance Storekeeper. Transactions with money, 

 too, require deliberation, for mistaken payments are with difficulty 

 corrected. 



But it is different with material. Here, on the one hand, the 

 actual delivery of the material in the shortest possible time is 

 often important; and on the other hand, as material is less port- 

 able than cash, so may errors due to its too precipitate expendi- 

 ture be more readily corrected, if a way of determining them 

 readily could be found. 



Administratively speaking, the main objection to a dual re- 

 sponsibility such as has been described, lies in the conflicting 

 interests of the two agents in question. The interests of the 

 Commanding Officer tend generally to his getting the material 

 he needs in manufacturing as promptly as possible from the store- 

 house to the workshops. Here delay works harm, and his own 

 interests suffer if he permits it. 



The interests of the Ordnance Storekeeper are directly op- 

 posed : he does not care how much the material may be required 



